Sarah Petersen

Sarah Petersen's antidisciplinary creative work—focused on installation, performance, and engaged practices, among other modes—is interested in the production of signs and signals that others can use to reconsider and intervene in social systems. Her creative work has been shown and co-created locally, nationally, and internationally. She has trained in various embodiment and dance practices and spatial articulation strategies, including as a professional organizer for creative clients.

She also collaborates regularly with artists and institutions in the production of new works, exhibitions, performances, and programs, including as the artistic producer for the year-long Goethe in the Skyways project space (2018-19) and as a board member for FD13 Residency for the Arts since 2018. Her arts writing has appeared in numerous publications as essays, reviews, and conversations with other artists.

Sarah has taught at MCAD since 2014 in the Media Arts and Design departments and has also served many roles in the MFA program, from teaching to mentoring to, now, directing. Beyond MCAD, she has taught in numerous art programs, including the Art for Social Change program at the Higher Education Consortium of Urban Affairs (HECUA), the interdisciplinary Environmental Studies program at Hamline University, the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and for the California State Summer School for the Arts, as well as serving as an undergraduate academic advisor at the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts. She holds degrees from the California Institute of the Arts (MFA in Art) and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (BFA in Art, BA in English).

Most recently, she was the 2022-23 Sustainability and Public Health Fellow at the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), an artist-in-residence program supported by Transportation for America, where she focused on creative public engagement strategies for sustainable, people-centered transportation futures.